


lay it to rest

by GrimRevolution



Series: the most haunted house in new york [5]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Music, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 06:03:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15164252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrimRevolution/pseuds/GrimRevolution
Summary: Once upon a time, Stephen Strange owned a Steinway piano.





	lay it to rest

Once upon a time, Stephen Strange owned a Steinway piano.

It had been a polished, massive thing that easily became the centrepiece of his steel and glass apartment. By the end of his career, playing the keys had become more of a stress relief than a pleasure.

After the accident, he would have given anything to hear it cooperate beneath his fingers.

oOo

Stephen meditated beneath the window of the Sanctum that looked so much like the Eye of Agamotto. It had been dark when he’d gotten up; the sky on the tinges of lighter blue, warning that the sun was coming.

It was better at dawn, where there was no one around with expectations of what he should be or who he had been. There was just who he was.

Between each breath and the thrumming _thump thump thump_ of his heart,  Stephen couldn’t stop the passing wonder of how much of his old life had been noise.

And how much of it had been _music_.

oOo

Pink Floyd played on the edge of Stephen’s nightmares. A haunting caused by a rising electric guitar.

Most days he can wake up before he hits the tail end of that semi. On others, the shattering of glass becomes cymbals and the crunching of metal, drums.

Logically...

 _Logically_ , Stephen knew that there was no correlation between the song and the accident.

Oh, but there is such a _massive_ difference between what he knows and how he feels.

oOo

Waking up to music playing in the kitchen was no longer a surprise and Stephen groaned on the couch, rubbing his hand over his face and blinking groggily. He opened his eyes to light streaming through the windows and closed them again, rolling over to shove his head into the couch.

 Something hit the carpet with a low vibrating thump that made guilt almost well up in his gut.

 _Almost_.

Stephen could remember, on the edge of his consciousness, what book he had been reading. Swelling drums turned into a thunderous guitar solo that played through the tense muscles of his back and made the base of his skull ache. No matter what he had read the night before, it was wiped from his mind with the racquet coming from the kitchen.

The music grew louder and Stephen groaned, pushed himself up, and looked over the back of the sofa.

“Wong!” He shouted, voice breaking.

There was no answer beyond the music.

Stephen cleared his throat. “ _Wong_!”

Something that sounded a lot like the iron skillet hit something that sounded fairly steel-like.

“What?” Wong came around the corner to the living room wearing a black apron that reached his knees, spatula in hand. ‘My cooking is so good even the smoke detectors cheer me on’ was written across the librarian’s chest.

Stephen stared at the letters for a good, solid minute before he shook his head. “What are you doing?”

“Cooking.”

“ _You’re_ cooking?”

Wong didn’t move or blink; his face expressionless.

Stephen laid the upper part of his torso across the leather of the sofa, watching the other man with narrowed eyes. “There’s a kitchen at Kamar-Taj.”

“There is.”

Sighing Stephen wondered if it would be possible for him to shove the librarian back through the portal to Nepal when he realized that the drums and guitar were lulling away, replaced by extremely familiar female vocals.

His eyes snapped to Wong who happened to have the same stony features as before except— _except_ —for the slight twitch of a finger. Stephen gathered his legs underneath him like a cat.

“Stephen,” Wong pointed the spatula in warning.

“You told me you’d never heard of Beyoncé.”

The pulse of the music bounced through the walls of the Sanctum as if the townhouse had amplified the sound.

Wong sniffed and frowned. “I never _said_ —”

Stephen pounced over the back of the sofa, lunging for the librarian. His foot hit nothing and, with a yelp, he fell through the floor and landed with a bounce on a bed. “What the—” turning over, he looked at the ceiling of his bedroom where the portal still sat.

Wong leaned over the side, only his head and shoulders visible. “Change,” he said, nose scrunching up. “And take a shower.”

Gold sparks fluttered down as the portal closed. The laugh that bubbled through Stephen was bright like a spring. After a moment, he rolled out of bed, ran his hands through his hair, and left for the bathroom.

oOo

Golden suture stitched together the fabric of reality. Stephen hummed as he worked, the Cloak of Levitation hovering over his shoulder, watching him work. The Nexus of Realities was a place of woven fabric and patches that marked the beginning and end of emptiness. It was the space between worlds and had once been the charge of the Ancient One. Now it was being kept by the Masters of the Sanctums until a new Sorcerer Supreme could be decided on.  

Red fabric slapped at Stephen’s shoulder and he grunted, looking back at the Cloak. “What?”

It waved its corners and snapped its collar.

“ _What_?”

One edge looked as if it was trying to snap before the fabric rubbed silk against velvet, badly mimicking the notes he had been absently humming before the song had ended.

Silence had settled around them as Stephen had tied off the stitches and he laughed softly. “You want me to _sing_?”

The Cloak straightened, quivering in anticipation.

Stephen sighed fondly and motioned to another of the holes. “Alright, alright, just—” He yelped as the relic shoved him through the empty space towards the rip. His foot slipped through dimensions before the Cloak yanked him back, fluttering sheepishly around his elbows. Igniting magic between his fingers to create a new spool of suture, Stephen thought over his thousands of options.

Tapping his hand against his knee to mimic a drum that wasn’t there, Stephen watched a needle made of stardust pierce reality and started to stitch the broken seams together.

“ _Where it began, I can't begin to knowing_ —” He sang, quiet at first.

There was no one there; nothing except him, some red fabric that had been woven of magic, and the edges of space-time.

Stephen’s voice grew in volume, the ridiculousness of it all making him grin as his Cloak pranced around him. “ _Hands_ ,” the long note was broken by a laugh as the relic spun like a ballroom dancer. “ _Touching hands_ ,” Placing his palm against his chest, Stephen crooned the notes to the object beside him, not caring how tone-deaf he sounded at the edge of nothing. “ _Reaching out, touching me, touching you—_ ”

The gold suture grew brighter under his joy but Stephen wasn’t paying attention, grabbing the Cloak and spinning the two of them around. “ _Sweet Caroline,_ ” he sang, vocalizing the ‘ _buh buh buhhh’_ that came after it with the same enthusiasm as a group of college kids in a truck with the radio turned up too loud. “ _Good times never seemed so good!_ ”

Magic shuddered around them, thrumming with the laughter and smiles as the Cloak whirled them around again.

“ _I'd be inclined—buh buh buhhh—to believe they never would—_ ”

There was no such thing as a cure for sadness, but singing loudly and out of tune?

Well, it helps for a while.

oOo

The gentle strum of magic grew taunt under a bow of will, vibrating beneath Stephen’s fingers. Above him, the sky flashed with light that highlighted the silhouettes of the creatures crawling across the empty road, their eyes white and lifeless. Thunder rumbled through, crashing over the steady _pat, pat, pat_ of drumming rain. The downpour stuck Stephen’s hair to his face, dripping from his chin and weighing down his robes.

Flaring out behind him, the Cloak of Levitation _thrived_. It was a spirit of the wind and danced through the violin of Arcane and flutes of Transmutation.  The water couldn’t weigh down the heavy red fabric; flicked off fluttering corners like an afterthought.

Stephen’s hands were steady in the roar of the storm, a wide grin on his face as he formed shapes with his fingers, playing a three-dimensional piano that controlled the hammers of reality.

Lightning struck a field, the already browned cornstalks igniting with just a bit of magic. Pale demons howled in a cacophonous chorus, fleeing away from the heat and into Stephen’s waiting arms. He opened a hole in reality, sending them back to the dimension they had crawled from until there was nothing left but the fading flames and bodies turning to thick, oily mud.

The ozone smell of the lightning stayed but the crackle of magic faded, taking the violins, the guitar, the trumpets, and the flutes.

All that was left was the rumble of the thunder and the drumming of the rain. Stephen wiped his hair out of his eyes, looked up at the night sky, and watched the storm rage on.

oOo

Wong looked up at the sound of plastic breaking against the ground. It had come from the study where Stephen had been tasked with filling out his Grimorie with newly mastered spells. Not knowing what he was expecting, Wong pushed open the door and found the radio shattered on the ground.

Staring at his shaking hand, Stephen’s eyes were wide and his skin was pale. There was energy crackling around him, the Cloak fluttering just beyond his shoulder to lunge into a battle that didn’t exist.

“Stephen?”

Blue eyes blinked, once, and looked up. They were glazed over, pupils dilated. Stephen opened his mouth but no sound came out except a choked groan.

Wong repaired the radio with a spark of will and placed it, turned off, back on the desk. “ _Stephen_ ,” he said, tone stern, “what did it play?”

Stephen looked away. “I just didn’t like it,” he lied.

oOo

Bristles made soft scratching sounds against the stone of the foyer, Stephen using the old wooden brush that seemed to appear in every supply closet no matter which one he opened. There was flapping and he saw a flash of red out of the corner of his eyes. Turning just in time, he watched with raised eyebrows as the Cloak set up a speaker on the coffee table and tried to press buttons on his iPod—one of the very few things left of his old life—without fingers.

“What are you up to?” he said, leaning on the broom.

His Cloak pointed down at the music player and slumped. If it had eyes, Stephen was sure that the fabric would have been glaring at the electronics as if they had been personally responsible for all things wrong in the world.

Chuckling, Stephen swung the broom up over his shoulder and squinted suspiciously at the speaker. “That’s not mine,” he said.

The Cloak shrugged, uncaringly, and pointed again. That time the cloth snapped at the motion.

Stephen rolled his eyes. “Alright, _fine_ ,” he grumbled, picking up the iPod. He connected it to the speaker (which made an eerie little blubber sound) and scrolled through his old music. The Cloak hovered over his shoulder, leaning close to his neck as if it could read.

There were playlists for reading and surgeries and driving and one for cleaning that was at the bottom of the list.

“Perfect,” Stephen said, pressing his thumb against the screen and placed it face down on the table. “No peeking,” he told the Cloak, nudging it away from the speaker and iPod with the handle of the broom.

There was a moment of silence before the horn and drums created a background for the croon of Billy Joel. Stephen laughed and turned on one heel, placing the bristles of the broom back to the floor. Beside him, the Cloak bobbed, swaying side to side.

Stephen slid an enchantment over the broom handle and let it go, reaching for enchanted fabric to draw it into a dance of quick feet, hips, and rapid spins. All he needed was an owl for the Sleeping Beauty moment, but the Cloak caught on quickly, obliging him with a simplified swing dance in the foyer of the Sanctum.

“ _Listen, boy, I'm sure that you think you got it all under control_ ,” Stephen sang along, not nearly as loud as in the nexus but loud enough that his relic trembled in its own kind of laughter. “ _You don't want somebody telling you the way to stay in someone's soul_ —”

As the song went on, Stephen felt the Cloak’s understanding of the music shift. It became part of his clothing, landing on his shoulders and flaring out when he twirled. Then it left, becoming his partner.

Two to one to two again.

Steps dodged around a still sweeping broom and laughter filled the townhouse up to the windows as fabric dipped a sorcerer.

As Billy Joel’s vocals came to a close, the Cloak swooped under Stephen, gathering him up in an all consuming hug before placing him back on the floor. “I don’t know how I managed to get any cleaning done,” he admitted to the opening organ of ‘Crocodile Rock’, already tapping one foot.

With a grin, Stephen offered a hand to the Cloak. “Shall we?” He said.

And so they danced.

oOo

 Once upon a time, Stephen Strange owned a Steinway piano.

He doesn’t really think about it all that much anymore.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he dreams about it.

But he dreams about a lot of things.

**Author's Note:**

> this was based off a prompt i got from tumblr and i actually really like how it came out


End file.
